CIPS Ontario Blogsite

Well it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally got on the blog trail for CIPS-Ontario.  First and foremost I would like to thank everyone in CIPS for the assistance and guidance I have received over my period of presidency so far, and I trust these people, and more will offer me advice to help me steer CIPS-Ontario through the rest of our 50th Anniversary year.

I have been mainly observing and communicating over the past few months to try to understand what the members of CIPS and prospective members of CIPS think about us, what we stand for and what we could do to better promote ourselves.The comments I have been getting have been predominantly around three main reasons  The value of our membership and what we offer to our members?  The value to the community and what we offer it?  CIPS as an organisation, what it is and how does it work?I’d like to take these in reverse order, for no better reason than they are easier, for me, to answer that way.

CIPS as an organisation, what it is and how it works

CIPS is a voluntary society of Professional I.T. people, which has a permanent paid administration staff to support the society’s needs.  It is spread out across the breadth of Canada and has relationships with I.T. Professionals across the globe, and associations with other internationally respected I.T. Professional groups such as the British Computer Society, Australian Computer Society, and IEEE Computer Society to name three. Our mandate is to support, promote and improve I.T. Professionalism here in Canada, and using our international associations have our high standards recognized and accepted on the global stage.The intent is that a CIPS certified professional can go anywhere in the globe and be recognised for the certifications they have gained through CIPS.  For anyone who has worked as part of the mechanism of a volunteer society, you can recognize the countless hours of effort and tribulations that go into getting widespread agreement on the way forward.  I am pleased to say that this year, our 50th Anniversary year, CIPS as a society, and we here in Ontario have reached a tipping point where Professional I.T. bodies across the globe and within the United Nations itself have all arrived at the same conclusion and identified a path forward.  How CIPS works is actually laid out in the various bye-laws, but I will attempt to summarize these here to make it easier to understand how it relates to the make-up of the organization across Canada.The Canadian Information Processing Society is broken up across Canada into Provincial Societies, such as CIPS-Ontario, each operating as uniquely incorporated bodies, some like us here in Ontario are broken down further into Sections which again are on the whole independent organisations.
At the head of CIPS is the Canadian Council of I.T. Professionals (CCITP) that is made up of members from each of the provinces, and whose task it is to set the strategy and overarching policies for CIPS as a National Society and monitor the deliverables identified from that strategy.

Below the CCITP at the National level is the Office of the Executive Council.  This body is made up of elected and selected members of the voluntary societies and permanent members of staff and these are tasked with formulating delivery of the strategy set by the CCITP and they are accountable to the CCITP. The CCITP is in turn accountable to the provinces.Each Province is managed by an elected board of executives, and these executives are responsible for setting policies and strategy at the Provincial level.   They are accountable to the membership of CIPS in the Province both directly and through Sections where they exist.  Independent sections are made up in much the same way as the Provincial boards, and are formed to get closer to the members to offer grass-roots services.Both the CCITP and OEC can create committees and Councils to help devise solutions and deploy the deliverables needed to further the aims of the organisation which are focused on I.T. excellence through its work on public policy, setting high standards within the profession and providing support to the I.T. community of professionals, their employers and the public.
More information can be obtain on the actual governance of the society from the links on the National site (http://www.cips.ca/about)

The value to the community and what CIPS offers
CIPS has in the past been viewed by the outside to be an exclusive group of I.T. gurus who worked pretty much within CIPS for the benefit of CIPS itself.  This has not actually been the case.  Whilst it is true that CIPS offers networking opportunities, and the ability to attend functions associated with the I.T. profession, CIPS has set some pretty high standards for certifying its members who aspire to the I.S.P. Certification or Information Systems Professional of Canada.

This certification identifies the holder of the I.S.P.  as someone who has a holistic and pervasive understanding of not just Information Systems and Information Technology, but also about business processes and functions and how technology can be best used to benefit the business.  This sets the I.S.P. apart from the purely technical or business oriented certifications that are on offer as it sets a bar that identifies to prospective employers and the public at large that an Information Systems Professional of Canada can be relied on to understand the best way to help business and technology meet to the benefit of all.

CIPS is the only professional organization in Canada that offers an Information Technology (IT) designation that is recognized by law* in Canada, but we are not stopping there.  In conjunction with the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP), a United Nations-founded/UNESCO association and its International Professional Practice Program (IP3) CIPS is working towards introducing a whole series of educational modules and professional practice development services that will allow us to offer and internationally supported certification that indicates the highest level of professionalism that is equivalent to or better than the International I.T. Professional designation offered by the International body.

We are doing this at the same time as accrediting University and College courses across the globe that meet with the criteria to allow the students graduating from those courses to be identified as completing the first part of the climb on the ladder to CIPS certification.

The value of our membership and what we offer to our members
I am asked regularly what value do we give our members, and what can members expect from CIPS.  My initial response is almost always “What do you want from CIPS?”

Membership of CIPS is no different than any other relationship you are going to enter into.  What you get out of it is always mutliplied by what you put into it.

Like any other society we offer Networking at the member level, discounted access to conferences and functions, reduced prices on goods and services.  But what we offer above and beyond that is much, much more.  As I explained above, we offer the opportunity for members to, through a series of progressive steps of professional development, be recognised, through CIPS certification as a professional of the highest ethical standards with a broad and penetrating knowledge of Information Technology and business functions and processes and how they are married to the benefit of all.

In addition you have the opportunity to add your own skills and experiences to the collective knowledge that resides inside CIPS so that we may continue to ensure that the Canadian I.T. professional is recognised globally as having the highest standards and best holistic understanding of how I.T. and business can be synergised.

I apologise for my first blog being such a lengthy one, but I feel this is a message that has been long overdue and it is one I hope carries with it the realisation that membership of CIPS is not membership of a club, it is membership in a family of professional minded individuals who want to help businesses profit by the correct application of Information Technology and are prepared to show they have the Certified skills to help business do just that.

I encourage you all to comment on this as it is only with your input CIPS can help you to help the profession and yourself at the same time.